-- Forest Outside of town 01:30 PM --
He wasn’t sleeping well, he kept seeing the bodies in his mind and when he slept they often penetrated his dreams. It was his day off, he had no uniform, no badge, no direct radio to his brothers and sisters in blue. Jimmy only had his gun holstered and hidden under his light tan jacket, and his cellphone with only one bar of service. He wasn’t expecting any trouble, not really, but he was returning to the scene of the first crime, and they always say serial killers do that as well, so he might as well have some sort of protection.
Jimmy walked up the forest trail to the clearing still marked off with police tape. There were supposed to be follow up investigations here to try and find more evidence. It would be happening either today or tomorrow but with the new murder in the park last night and the already small town police force already being stretched thin meant the investigation would be pushed back, and most likely rushed. It was overcast today as well, and the weather forecast was saying rain was on its way.
“Alright.” Jimmy said to himself as he stepped under the police line. “Lets see what we can see.”
Now Jimmy didn’t have much experience in forensics, but he was feeling pretty confident. He started by searching the outskirts of the ticker tape to see if he could find anything that had dropped. He was hoping for a knife with fingerprints and a note next to it identifying the killer with a confession, and an address. That, of course, didn’t happen, and Jimmy found himself back in the area where the body had been discovered.
There was nothing left here, no more chalk lines, no more body, just a light red stain on the ground where the male had been found. He had been night jogging, much like the woman from last night. Was the killer simply targeting runners at night? Or was there something more?
“Could it be a fitness thing? Overpowering someone?” Jimmy whispered to himself.
A noise in the brush behind Jimmy has him leap up and spin around quickly, one hand on his gun behind him. Across the crime scene from deeper in the woods stands a pale thin man in a plain white shirt and dirty knee ripped blue jeans staring at Jimmy a little shocked.
“You lost buddy?” Jimmy asks hesitantly. The pale man says nothing but holds up his hands in a manner to indicate that he means no harm while slowly backing up. His palms were covered in a red liquid, that looked like blood. Jimmy didn’t waste a second, pulling out his gun and shouting at the man. “Stay where you are!”
Instead of listening to him the man spun quickly and broke into a run deeper into the woods. Jimmy kept enough wits about him to not fire, but instead he broke into a run trying to catch up with the pale man.
-- 2:05 PM Somewhere in town --
A banging noise from next door roused him from the floor. He groaned and grabbed his stomach. It hurt, but so did his whole body, hell his head was still pounding, and now it felt as if every bone in him had been tugged out of place. He stood and looked down at his heavily distended stomach before stepping back in shock, looking now to his arms which looked unnaturally long. The fingers alone looked an inch longer at least. He clenched his elongated fist and felt his fine corded muscles tighten in his arm, feeling powerful. He stumbled down the hall on longer legs that had grown thin but taut with corded muscle as well, and made his way into the bathroom. He flicked on the switch and damn near leapt back with a yelp.
The face that greeted him was not his own. Unlike his arms and legs his head seemed as if it had shrunk a little and had rounded out. His ears were practically nubs against the side of his head. His eyes looked huge in his head, his iris was now an icy blue instead of its normal hazel. And his skin was tight against his skull and a sickly bleach pale white.
“What the actual fuck is going on?” he asked no one before feeling a sudden lurch in his stomach, dropping him to the ground in a loud groan. The banging of drums in his ears stopped, at least for a moment, only to be replaced with the banging of his neighbor against the wall. As if a switch had been flipped, the drums, the pipes, and the chanting started anew. In a flash of rage he stood up and punched the wall in frustration. His fist hit the wall and crashed through it like paper, stopping just before breaking through the other side.
Whatever his neighbor had been doing suddenly stopped. There was silence from the apartment next to him for about a minute before the neighbors front door slammed and a new pounding came from his door.
“Daniel Shermans!” Called his neighbor, a latino man who he never truly learned the name of. He growled at the new source of pounding and strode over to the door, opening it a peek. However the latino man had other plans and pushed the door fully open, about to launch into a tirade but stopped at the sight before him. Who he once knew as Daniel Shermans, his quiet plain looking neighbor, was instead some kind of tall, round headed monster, with caked blood covering his face and torso.
“Diablo!” The latino man yelled, turning to run, only to stop as Daniel subconsciously reached out and grabbed the the man’s arm and pulled him inside, throwing him to the floor.
“I’m absolutely famished.” he murmured in a daze as he shut the door, turning to the man who was cowering against the stove looking for some way to escape. He would try to scream, but it would soon be silenced as Daniel sated his ever growing hunger.
-- 5:30 PM Betsy’s Diner --
Jersey tore into his second bloody steak of the day as I stare out the window at the thick clouds in the sky made it seem darker than it truly was coupled with the torrents of rain now falling upon the city. I was drinking coffee, but had not ordered anything to eat yet. I was letting Jersey, who had berated me the moment he saw me, some time to cool down before we decide what was next.
“Well.” I started, stopping to gauge Jerseys reaction as I took a drink of coffee. “You spoke with Gerald.”
Jersey hadn’t said much about what had transpired, just that he had went and that I had made a fool out of him spreading the lie that Skinwalkers collected organs. Apparently they had forgotten the case I cracked a year before Jersey came to town where a Skinwalker was collecting body parts in an attempt to make ancient elixirs, but whatever. That wasn’t important here.
Jersey nodded, finished chewing his bite of steak and wiped his mouth before sitting back against the diners booth seat.
“Yeah.” he said simply. “And some old guy at the bar. Dressed like a cowboy and spoke slowly.”
“Did you catch his name?” my eyes narrow as I ask.
“Nope. We never exchanged names.”
“Well then it could have been anyone.” I say dismissively. “It sounds like old Ironmaker, their leader, though.”
Jersey, who was now taking a drink of soda, damn near choked. “Ivan Ironmaker?”
I just nod and take a sip of my coffee.
“Now that I think about it Gerald did defer to him a lot.” Jersey looked across the table to me then and added. “I don’t think they are a part of this though. From what I can gather they didn’t even know about the murders until I came in there. Erica wants us to keep an eye on them still though.”
“Erica is a part of this now?” I ask, eyebrows raised. Jersey doesn’t say anymore on the subject however, just nods. I nod back. “Well then, I got someone we can go talk to up in the woods. Would have checked in on him the other night but there were too many people about.”
This time Jerseys eyebrow peaks. “Oh? Who we going to go see?”
“His name is Sterling. He, uh, lives out in the woods.” I say simply. I didn’t want to give to many details right now, being we were in a full diner at the time.
Jersey nods again, catching my drift, and we go back to silence.
Something that is interrupted quite quickly as Beth stalks over, coffee pot ever at the ready.
“You gonna order anything?” she asks me in her deadpan voice she reserves only for me.
I’m not feeling particularly playful tonight, perhaps its the rain, but I don’t say anything in return and just give a small shake of my head and tap my coffee cup.
“Just coffee for me tonight.”
She doesn’t give me any grief as she fills my coffee back up before taking Jerseys almost empty glass of soda to refill. She’d back before both Jersey or I know it with a new full glass of soda which she sets down in front of Jersey before splashing a little more coffee into my cup.
“Thanks.” I say deadpan.
“Dont mention it.” Beth returns just as deadpan before stepping over to the next booth where a family was getting ready to take their order.
“She doesn’t like you much.” Jersey noted for about the thirtieth time since they had been coming here. “Why is that?”
Before I can answer Beth comes from the side excusing herself from the family a moment.
“I’ve watched him come in here for the past fifteen years, hasn’t aged a day.” she looks down at me and frowns before looking back to Jersey. “People who never seem to age are always trouble.”
She moves back to the table, apologizing, and Jersey begins to laugh. I grumble and take a drink of my coffee. It was decaf. God damn it. This day was not turning out in my favor.
“Alright, I will meet you at the car. I need a smoke.”
Jersey nods as I fish through my pockets locating a crumpled up fiver and throwing it down on the table before standing up and walking through the diner and out the door.
-- 6:20 The forest outside of town --
Jersey pulled the car up behind a tan oldsmobile parked on the side of the road. This was the start of a popular running path for night joggers as the path followed along the road and was lit up by street lights. Something struck me as odd about the oldsmobile but I couldn’t put my finger on it so I dropped the issue and Jersey and I stalked up the path towards the crime scene where the body had been found.
The rain was coming down harder now, and what physical clues were most likely washed away now. Jersey was grumbling about not having a hood and having forgotten his umbrella. I decide to push his buttons a little by whistling Toto’s Africa which makes him grumble even more. We pass the police line and journey into the thicker woods where the hard rain was reduced slightly, the thick tree’s canopy intersecting and only allowing the rain to come through at certain spots.
“How far do we got to go?” Jersey asked once we were a little ways past the first crime scene.
“We got a little bit of a hike ahead of us. Nose sharp please, we are trying to skirt past vampire territory and the last thing we need is the Night Children on us.”
“Night Children?” Jersey asked looking over to Nathan with a quizzical look.
“I’ll tell you about them later, nasty sort.”
“What about this Sterling person? Is he a vampire who lives away from the commune?”
I laugh and shake my head. “Have I really not told you about Sterling? He’s a bigfoot.”
Jersey stopped in his tracks and looked hard at me as he tried to determine if I was joking.
“Bigfoot aren’t real.” he said “They are made-up, like Goatmen.”
“You know, I used to think that too, and then I met Sterling. Also goatmen are real, we had one come through town about ten years ago, Ezra I think his name was. Gave everyone a heap of trouble before moving on.”
“So your friend Sterling is a Bigfoot, and he lives out in the woods. How did you come across the worlds most elusive creature?”
“The Vamps found him first actually, caught him, they were gonna see what his blood tasted like. One of my contacts called me and told me I should probably get up to the commune and so I hauled ass up here and had to talk them out of it. Thankfully Jackson has a soft spot for me and let the poor guy go. They work together now to keep him hidden from the public and he can live his life naturally.”
“That’s it?”
“Well of course not.”. I say sharply at Jersey. “It’s a longer story but we need to be quiet so you got the super cut down short form. Let’s go.”
Jersey sighs and nods as he we resume walking. “Okay, okay. Let’s go see a Bigfoot.”
-- 6:20 Somewhere in town --
There wasn’t much left of Daniels neighbor. Bones, sinewy muscles. Most of him was either splattered on the walls and across the floor of Daniels kitchen or sitting like a brick in Daniels stomach. The pounding never stopped the whole time, not like before when he sated his hunger. They were going full blast in his head. He screamed and pounded heavily on the floor. He began to look around and felt his chest get heavy as anxiety took hold, his apartment felt so confined. He needed to be away from here. He needed to be free.
He walked on all fours and felt the remnants of the man in his stomach shift in a more comfortable manner. He reached up and opened the door, peeking his red streaked face out and looked both ways down the halls.
“Clllleeeaaarrr” he stretched out the word as if the very sound was foreign to him. He did not dwell on this, instead Daniel screeched, loud and angry, before tearing through the halls to the stairway where he could reach the lobby of the apartment complex and escape into the night. There were people on the stairs, an unlucky couple who were climbing slowly after hearing the screech above them. They both screamed as Daniel rounded the stairs on all fours, leaping with a loud growl, grabbing both of them by their faces and bringing them quickly to the ground with a horrible sound.
Daniels made a horrible noise, something akin to a laugh, as he continued down the stair, leaving two more dead in his wake. He was outside now. The fresh air was what he needed as the volume of the drums in his head lowered. It was raining heavily, and he looked up to the sky grinning a big bloody grin before looking around. The buildings, tall and imposing, filled him with a little fear, before he looked to his left to see the rise of the woods on the mountain. He remembered then, his first kill was there. He needed to go there. There it would be safe. Safe to hunt. To feed.
“Hungry.” he said to himself as he bounded on all fours down the street.
-- 7:00 Deep in the woods --
The rain let up a bit and I made Jersey walk behind me, less out of safety and because he smelled like a wet dog.
“Alright, we should be out of commune territory.” I say as we pass over a tree that had been knocked from the ground across a creek as a makeshift bridge. “Let’s see if he’s nearby. Warning, he’s pretty hyper.”
Jersey had watched those hunting Bigfoot shows, and all of them whooped and hollered and insisted that it was the sound Bigfoots made. Jersey always thought they looked stupid, and the thought made him chuckle to himself silently hoping I would put my hand to my mouth and start hollering. Now that, Jersey thought, would be a comical sight.
Unfortunately for him I did not. “Oy!” I yelled “Sterling! You there my boy!?”
Silence met me and Jersey still saw the humor in my yelling enough to laugh. He stopped abruptly, however, a moment later when a voice rang out in the distance.
“Oy!” came the voice from the deep woods ahead of them. “Nathan! Is that you my boy?”
The voice, something Jersey thought would be deep and booming with broken english, instead was deep but with a slightly posh british accent. The owner of the voice emerged from the deep woods and into the clearing beside the creek where Jersey and Nathan stood waiting. He at least looked like Jersey had hoped, tall, had to be about eight feet at least, built like a barrel and covered in thick reddish brown fur from head to toe.
He had a big grin showing big teeth except he was missing incisors and canines. Sterling just ate nuts, berries, and flowers with the odd assortment of leaves and stuff. The bigfoot grinned down at us and held out his hands expectedly, I usually brought him a couple packs of oreo’s as the big guy has quite the sweet tooth, but I frowned and shook my head.
“Sorry Sterling, not this time. Here on official business and didn’t have time for a stop.”
Sterling frowned and placed his hands behind his back. “Oh okay, I get it.” he said like a disappointed child. “Who is your friend there?” he asked kind of sheepishly.
“Oh! Sterling! This is my partner, Jersey. I’ve told you about him.”
Recognition lighted up in the Bigfoots eyes and he grinned and turned to Jersey sharply holding out his hand which looked like a baseball glove where Jerseys own hand was the baseball.
“Right! Jersey! Nice to meet you my boy!”
Jersey shook and had to steady himself as Sterling shook Jerseys hand with overpowering force. “N-Nice to meet you too.” he said, still in a shock. Sterling stopped suddenly and rounded on me, worry crossing his face.
“But what about the Night Children Nathan? You said it’s dangerous to bring a werewolf out to these parts!”
I nod. “Well it is, but there have been some bad things happening in town and it’s really not safe to be alone right now.”
“Uh-oh.” Sterling said a little nervously. “What happened?”
“Someone got killed at the edge of the forest. Ripped a part. Both bites and slashes. There were neck wounds, and stomach ripped open with organs missing. It was brutal to say the least.” I say watching the Yeti’s face. I know he’s not involved in this but I want to see if he’s hiding anything. We may be friends, but he’s garnered friends with the vampire commune not far from here as well. He looked mortified.
“Why does that bring you out here though?” he asked looking around frightfully..
“We are just wondering if you’ve seen anything, heard anything. Since it happened so close I just wanted to make sure whatever did it didn’t flee this way and possibly tangle with you at all.”
“Nope, I haven’t seen anything. It’s just me and Dodge. We’ve just been gathering food and getting him ready for hibernation.”
I turn to Jersey who has a look of confusion and concern on his face.
“Dodge is his bear friend he named.”
Jersey nods like he got the jist of it and starts to motion for them to continue only to stop and cock his head to the side. He begins to sniff the air as Sterling begins to speak again but I stop him as I watch Jersey.
“There’s a couple people coming this way.” Jersey says pointing the direction we came.
“Well shit.” I curse. I should have ordered the usual back at the diner. I look around for a moment and sigh before turning to Sterling. “ Alright. Sterling, it was nice talking to you my boy but I better go deal with the children.”
“Just like that?” Sterling asked his big joyful face twisting. “We haven’t got to catch up yet.”
I nod. “Sorry my boy, official business and all. When were wrapped up I will make sure to bring you plenty of Oreo’s.”
This made the bigfoots face light up and he hopped up and down a few times in delight. “Alright! Alright! Sounds good to me my boy! Can’t wait!” he hopped up and down again before tapping Jersey on the back. “Nice to meet you my boy! Don’t be a stranger now!” and without another thought he bound into the woods with that grin of his.
As he did so several figures appeared from the woods on the other side of the creek from us. It was Jerseys turn to curse as the vampires who had come to meet us were the Night Children, or at least that’s what they called themselves. There were about seven of them, vampires all, the age they were when turned ranged from six to nine.
“Hello Nathan.” said the one in the middle, stepping forward. “Jackson wants to see you.”
-- 7:00 PM Unknown Location --
Jimmy woke up screaming.
“Fuck! Shit! What the fuck! What the fuck! Fuck!”
Jimmy was hanging upside down, his legs were bound by what felt like rope, his hands were bound to one another and the bindings were tied around his belt. He didn’t know how long he had been wherever here was but wherever he was being kept was pitch black. He wasn’t sure how he had gotten here. He had been chasing the pale skinned man almost about to get a hold on him when something grabbed his leg and knocked him to the ground. Something heavy, a boot perhaps, struck the side of his head.
Now that he thought on it he could feel a swollen throb coming from his head. He swayed in the darkness lightly as he listened for any sound. When he heard nothing he began to fight with the bindings around his hands but they smaller cord was still too strong, and the bindings were knotted expertly.
“Hello!” Jimmy shouted as loud as he could. “Hello!?” He knew whoever showed up wouldn’t be friendly, but he wanted to identify his attackers as soon as he could.
The only answer came the sound of children’s laughter from the darkness all around.
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